Today, everyone associates him with such fairy tales as “Duck a weirdo”, “Hansel and Małgosia”, “At the stall” or a novel, but he was a lawyer by profession. He was one of the first specialists in copyright law. Jan Brzechwa was asked for help not only by his countrymen, but also by citizens from all over Europe. Later, he began to write poems, he also fulfilled himself as an artist, he created songs and scripts for pre-war sketches. He didn’t even think about them because he never liked them.
During the boring holidays he chose a new artistic path. It was a hit
The breakthrough came in the mid-1930s. Brzechwa went to a popular boarding house in Otwock, where he intended to spend his summer vacation. The weather was rainy though, so he spent most of his time indoors. One day he met a woman, a kindergarten teacher by profession, who turned his head. However, she was unfazed by his advances, so he thought he would impress her by writing poems for her charges.
He met there, most likely not without charm and beauty, a boarder, a kindergarten teacher by profession. And for her, as he put it, treating it as a joke, he started writing poems for children
— Stanislaw Ryszard Dobrowolski. It was the beginning of an extremely fruitful period in the artist’s life.
His first book of poems appeared on bookstore shelves as early as 1938. Then he had to face misunderstanding and criticism of the environment. Some have argued that his language is not age-appropriate. It was believed that children would be unable to understand the numerous allusions, abstract humor, or morally ambiguous. However, parents and their children, who immediately fell in love with the stories he created, were of a different opinion.
He created for children, although he did not like them. The label of “manufacturer of children’s haberdashery” was unfair to him
Brzechwa did not hide that his success in this field came as a surprise to him, as he maintained that he had written his first poems “for fun” and had no expectations of them. He also openly admitted that he does not like children. Nevertheless, a year after the debut of the first, he published another volume, Duck the Stranger, and in 1946, the already cult Akademia Pana Kleks appeared on the publishing market.
I know that in the environment of our colleagues I am considered to be something between a semi-intelligent and a manufacturer of children’s accessories
— constantly in letters to Marian Brandys.
While he was able to find a common thread with older children and teenagers, he treated them as equals, the few-year-olds gave him goosebumps and he avoided their company like the plague. — He simply did not tolerate the exuberance and emotional directness of the youngest — Joanna Papuzińska. Many even claimed that it was for this reason that he met his only daughter Krystyna, who was the fruit of his marriage to Maria Sunderland, only when she was 9 years old. The first meeting with the firstborn took place in sad circumstances, because during the funeral of Bolesław Leśmian, to whom he was related.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
